Opportunities to train amphibious crews in launching, maneuvering, landing, and recovery are limited by ship availability, lengthy requisition process, crew distribution, travel requirements, weather conditions, and political climate, as well as by budgetary, time, and other personnel constraints. Yet it is imperative that crews receive adequate training before engaging in such inherently hazardous operations, possibly subjected simultaneously to heavy weather, enemy fire, or unexpected equipment malfunction.
Simulators have proved their worth in regard to air, land, sea, and undersea activities, but heretofore amphibious operations have not received comparable attention or achieved appreciable success, probably owing in large part to the diversity of demands made upon amphibious personnel and their equipment in actual operations. The variety of requirements necessitates a diversified approach to such training and to the conditions to be encountered, especially at the interface between shipboard and waterborne status of individual amphibious craft, whether designed to displace water or to hover above the water surface. Various types of amphibious craft are commonly transported to and from operational areas on a transport vessel dedicated to that task and sometimes referred to as a landing ship.
Inventive contributions to seagoing situations have tended to concentrate upon simulating pitch and roll as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,561,137 to Guyon or U.S. Pat. No. 4,822,281 to Zajicek; or to simulating maneuvering and navigation, as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,596,375 to Hervieu. U.S. Pat. No. 3,871,113 to Crago and Emmerson, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,026,038 to Sunter and Prins. More recent U.S. Pat. No. 4,854,876 to Heath and Cole for an Aircraft Carrier Simulator and Method exemplifies novel simulation of the difficult airborne-to-shipboard transition.
My invention is directed to simulating the difficult transition for amphibious vehicles from shipboard to waterborne status and back onto shipboard so as to expose amphibious crews to a wide variety of situations such as they might encounter during and after deployment.